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One thing trolls use to their advantage is a certain level of anonymity that the internet can account for. You can assume any pen name and get after it and nobody can track you, right?

Well, as someone who has worked in IT before (and an avid fan of the show The Internet Ruined My Life), I can tell you that’s not the case. Often times a little detective work in the form if IP tracing and comment/post logs will bring you up out of the water. Hell, even before the information age it was often easy to figure out the identity behind the pen name – think of how quickly people caught onto the fact Richard Bachman was in fact Stephen King. It was quite obvious to anyone who had ever read any of King’s works.

Well think of how much easier it is to do detective work with the internet. If some of you were former Xanga bloggers, surely you remember “LoBornLyte?” Someone did some detective work and identified this person as a guy by the name of Curtis Bell – a high school coach somewhere in Cali if I remember right.

Anyway, I digress. Honestly, I had a hunch it might have been who I thought it was, but a little detective work absolutely confirmed the identity of my little troll. How did I figure it out? You’re about to find out!

In Fall of 2017 an old classmate resurfaced and commented a few of my blog posts. How he found me I haven’t a clue, but somehow he did. He thought he could hide behind various facetious pen names like “Your ISU Buddy,” “Your Buddy” among others. However, he made a grave mistake – he used his old Idaho State University email address! I had a positive identification on him quick and as those who were following me at the time can remember I called him out on it. He went away after I did and seemingly I figured the threat was gone.

Well a year later I started getting troll comments from this “Mike Muku” guy and looking through my logs I noticed he used the pen name “Mile” before he assumed the monkier Mike Muku. I did some digging in my Idaho State email address to find if maybe he used that or another one of his recent pen names and found where he had used the handle “Mile” back in 2017, as you can see here, along with his ISU email address:

I noticed certain similarities in the writing style between that Mile and the current Mile/Mike Muku, as I’m sure you do. That’s when I started putting 2 and 2 together. So what do I do? I type the name “Milan Bimali” (“Mile’s” real name) into a simple Google Search and it led to this:

There you have it ladies and gentlemen! I knew from recent IP logs that this “Mike Muku” had some association with UAMS. The very first Google search result led me to Milan Bimali, Ph.D., Assitant Professor of Biostatistics at none other than UAMS. Look at his MS citation and the year – it overlaps with my time there. This is absolutely the correct Milan Bimali; I know this is the first time you’ve seen his sorry face but I recognized the face before I even looked at the CV.

So now that I, and you all, have a face to a pen name, let me ask you this: how would you feel if you knew how a professor acted to his former colleagues or maybe even random strangers? Would you accept your professor treating you this way? Of course you wouldn’t! You’d walk out of class, never to return, and file a complaint with your institution.

I have to wonder if UAMS condones this kind of stalkerish, harassing online behavior from their faculty. If they are willing to tolerate this kind of behavior from their faculty, that is a huge stain on their credibility as an institution of higher learning and research. If they had an ounce of self-respect they’d have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of behavior and would offer up an ultimatum: clean up your act or you’re fired.

So then, Dr. Bimali, all I have to say is ball is in my court now. If you put so much as one more toe out of line I can guarantee you I will get on the phone with your superiors and let them know everything. Of course, if they choose not to take action that’s on them and I can’t control that. I just think they should know what kind of people they have molding the minds (or, should I say, poisoning the minds) of future medical professionals. This attitude is very unbecoming of any medical professional and should not be tolerated, ever. Dr. Gregory House might have been a funny character but if any real life doctor acted the way he did he’d find himself unemployed and unemployable both.

Just a friendly suggestion, good doctor: FUCK OFF!!! If you don’t, I accept no responsibility for what might befall you. You have been duly warned.

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If it is one thing I will say, having the office right next door to the conference room has its advantages. I hear EVERYTHING. Whatever schemes the bosses are up to make their way to my hyper-sensitive ears and I get the “inside scoop” as it were on a lot of the shady bullshit they’re pulling, and what I overheard yesterday made me physically sick and it serves as a reminder that it’s not what you know it’s who you know.

I am the 2nd LEAST paid person in this office despite having by far the most education. The only person paid less than me is the HR lady who is honestly way underpaid. The person right above me is our so-called “inventory manager” and he makes the equivalent of $1/hr more than me based on 40 hours (note: he’s hourly whereas I’m salary; he gets overtime, I do not so the discrepancy is even bigger) but he has less education and less time in the company than I do, so it’s already unfair to me.

What’s even more unfair is the discussion I overheard yesterday (though luckily I will be long gone before this even comes to fruition). The powers that be were discussing who will be replacing our branch manager when he retires as he’s nearing retirement. Well, having the most crane knowledge of the bottom feeders as well as the longest time served, I would be the logical choice for that position. Did my name ever come up in the discussion? No. Whose did? Young, uneducated “inventory manager’s.” Why? I’m not a suck up and I will stand up to the powers that be and tell them they’re full of shit when they are. Inventory manager? Hah, he sucks up and kisses ass. He’s got shit all over his nose. He’s their little bitch and always quick to tattle when someone says they aren’t happy here or are considering moving on to other employment. To make matters worse, he doesn’t know the first fucking thing about cranes, how they work, etc. – all he knows are individual pieces of cranes (not necessarily what they’re used for).

Of course, HR lady and I talked about this and she agrees with me: it’s because inventory manager is a kiss-up. Obviously he’s power hungry too as he chose to leave behind a wife and young kid (now divorced and to my knowledge he let his now ex-wife have full custody) to pursue power within this company. Just goes to show what his priorities are. I hate working for our current branch manager bad enough, this guy who is actually much younger and stupider than me would be a nightmare to work for.

Again, luckily nothing here will come to fruition until I’m long gone but it just goes to show that kissing up is what gets you moved up; not job performance, not knowledge or anything like that. I also suspect there was some disability discrimination going on when they passed over me (let’s face it: we autists always get the short end of the stick in this arena). Though I would not have accepted the position if offered, for them to gloss over me is a slap in my face and I did find it very hurtful.

Anyway, just more corporate assfuckery I guess. I don’t see how anyone makes an entire life of it. It’s so soul-draining. I will not miss it when I leave, even though I will likely take a substantial pay cut when I do. Alas, money ain’t everything.

I knew it was bound to happen at some point despite my best attempts at keeping my blog separate and under-the-radar from those who know or knew me IRL and who I wanted nothing to do with ever again: I have someone from my past who I’d rather forget about come across me and is becoming a thorn in my side. I’ve let it go until now (including blacklisting this guy’s email and IP) but apparently he’s desperate to get a response from me so here you go, and I’m sure this isn’t what he had in mind.

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Dear Troll,

You mean to tell me you’ve come back to be a thorn in my side nearly six years since I departed from Idaho State? I thought you were a thing of the past. How you managed to find my blog is beyond me but I will say I’m rather irritated by your comments insulting my intelligence, my tattoos, my political and/or religious beliefs among other things. I might not have approved any of your worthless comments (especially given you using facetious names such as “your ISU buddy” and bullshit like that) but I have made note of every one of them.

I don’t know if you know this, but WordPress logs your email address and IP so I know exactly who you are. I would name you by name on here, but I’m a better person than that, especially since you seem too chickenshit to put your name behind your ridiculous comments. You insult my tattoos as bad; well do you have any yourself? Do you think you could do a better one? Tattoos are art and art is in the eyes of the beholder – what’s ugly to someone might be beautiful and meaningful to another.

You also like to insult my intelligence and mathematical ability as the reasons I failed out at ISU (only to have to finish elsewhere). Little do you know about the personal demons I was battling at the time (which, admittedly, did turn me into a functioning alcoholic as you accused me of being) so I don’t think you have any room to judge. What I was going through is beyond your remotest comprehension. It would have broken you or anyone else, so before you talk put yourself in my shoes to see how you would have handled it. I can guarantee you it wouldn’t have been any different.

Alas, I know you’re all talk and no walk. You can’t even put your name on any of these comments. If you really had a backbone you’d put your name on these and then maybe I would have approved your stupid little comments so perhaps others would see what a petty little cuntbucket you are. You think you’re all that; you ain’t shit.

If you really think you’re something, why don’t you come over here to Dallas (or Abilene, either one as I’m in both places regularly) and say all this shit straight to my face? Oh, are you too fucking chickenshit to do that? Are you afraid I might kick your scrawny little Nepalese ass to the moon and back? Well you should be; I’m twice your size and I’d make minced meat out of you in nothing flat and you know it.

Nonetheless, let this serve as a fair warning – if you continue to harass me I will consult an attorney and explore my options as to what legal action I can take against you, be it criminal or civil proceedings or both. You think you’re so smart and so clever, but I have your email and IP and I know who you are. I can absolutely prove your identity to the authorities. I will have your ass served up on a silver platter, so I suggest you cut this bullshit out.

I’m sure you’ve made a decent life for yourself post grad school, and so have I. Let’s continue going our separate ways and just forget about each other as we had done for the past nearly six years. It’ll be easier for both of us if you comply with this request.

I’ll be the first to admit I have a lot of regrets in my life, though most of them are quite small. If I had to do some things over again there are things I would absolutely change over the course of my life (who wouldn’t?) but most of these things only had minor and temporary effects on my life. Then you have the moderate regrets which have had lasting but not catastrophic effects on my life, but there is one life decision I made that has had a very negative impact on my life and I will take this negative impact with me to my grave.

So what’s my biggest regret in life? I have no hesitation on the answer to that question. My biggest regret is going to college (and later grad school). If I knew then what I know now, I would have skipped it altogether and not wasted six years of my life and taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt that I will never be able to pay off.

Like most, I was brainwashed by the American K-12 system into thinking the only way you’re going to have any sort of a decent living is to go to college. To be totally fair, if I were to pursue an airline career it would have been beneficial, but not absolutely essential, to have a college degree. However, I was still in high school by the time I was shut out of that career so that’s neither here nor there. Alas, I went to college, got a bachelor’s degree and spent a year and a half teaching high school math before eventually moving 1,300 miles north to pursue what I was intending to be a DA (Doctor of Arts – a teaching doctorate as opposed to the research emphasis of a PhD).

Alas, that didn’t happen either. Due to some unfortunate home life circumstances as well as the grips of clinical depression and burnout taking a toll I petered out before even completing the MS and I wound up finishing that elsewhere at a no-name college. Of course, I had plenty of time to do so as well – I was unemployed for a period of nearly four years. Nobody wanted to give me a job. Even the lowest level jobs didn’t want me. It wasn’t until a long time friend of mine pulled some strings to get me into my current company that I had the slightest of hope that I’d be employed again and I had all but resigned myself into thinking I was destined for a life either in an institution or on the side of the street begging for change. Of course, if that had been my fate I wouldn’t be here to type this right now as I would have no doubt committed suicide rather than to live that way.

Alas, are my degrees really being used? The answer is absolutely NO. I’m not using my degrees at all. I could be doing what I am doing now with just a high school diploma and some technical training. I don’t have the pure, raw brain power to even think of ever being a P.E. so a low-level engineer is where I will cap out in this career path. If I did have that level of brain power, I would consider college a worthy investment, but I just do not.

So rewind 12.5 years ago, and I’m just about to graduate from high school. What would I do instead of going to college? That one’s an easy one: I’d take the money my parents had saved up for college and I’d invest it while starting out with a low-level job somewhere and being completely debt-free. I’d treat it as temporary and a way of biding my time to self-educate on how to start my own business. Then, when I was confident I could, I would have launched my own business. L&B could be a reality today if I hadn’t fucked my life up with college/grad school.

Now, none of this is to disparage college entirely. It can be a good choice if you have the brain power to be a scientist, engineer or doctor. I’m reluctant to say education is a good choice because it doesn’t pay, but teaching is a noble profession and if that’s your love then that’s what you should do even though you’ll be in debt forever. That said, for most of us? I think college is a bad deal. It costs too much, returns way too little on investment and the average person is worse off for going to college. This much is clear to me now.

So that’s why college is my biggest regret. There is no doubt that I’m much worse off financially and in overall life satisfaction because of it. I won’t say it’s totally ruined my life, but it’s probably the worst decision I ever made and it has had substantial and lasting negative effects on my life. Alas, as they say hindsight is 20/20 and I guess what’s done is done so there’s no purpose in just dwelling on it.

Well, first off just so my readers know, nothing too serious came of the incident on Monday so we’re good there. I still have a job and whatever so no worries whatsoever.

With that out of the way, I am about to write a post that brings back some very painful memories for me, and it was triggered by some insensitive asshole on the Facebook page of a local news station that enraged me. Just warning you, there WILL be some rather coarse language coming up, just in case you are offended by that kind of thing.

So on the news page I was reading about a mother suing school administrators because her son was bullied into committing suicide and the administrators did nothing to stop the bullying. Well, first off let me just say the fact that our school admins don’t do a god-fucking-damn thing about bullies pisses me the fuck off. They let it go on undeterred causing a vast amount of both physical and emotional pain and that shit just doesn’t go away. At any rate, I hope the mother gets some sort of justice out of this travesty. IMO the administrators and bullies should be criminally charged as well.

Anyway, as if I wasn’t already pissed off enough about it, some insensitive stupid-ass cocksucking motherfucker just had to leave a smart remark. He said something to along the lines of “I’m sorry but we raise our kids to be above the hate. Words don’t hurt.”

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!? Words don’t hurt? Ah, the old “sticks and stones” bullshit. I hate that saying. Actually, I think I’m going to fix that saying into something true. How about this, jackass: “Sticks and stones might break my bones but eventually my bones will heal, but the hateful words you say today the pain from them I will forever feel.” Yeah, that’s more like it.

As the bullied kid, I can guaran-fucking-tee you that those words hurt then and they still hurt, and I’m 11 god-fucking-damn years out of high school. I remember how they called me tubby, nerd, geek, pulled pranks on me, took advantage of my social ineptitude and just had to make loud, dramatic throat clearing sounds as they passed me in the hallway just to make fun of me (I have allergy-induced postnasal drip and I have to clear my throat quite often). It still get pissed off and hurt thinking about it. Actually I’m starting to cry as I type this but for the sake of standing up for justice I’m continuing on despite the pain it is causing me right now.

No, I don’t have anything to do with the assholes from high school. I won’t even talk to them or acknowledge their existence because of the memories it brings back. I won’t add them as Facebook friends. If anything, if I see any of those chickenshit motherfuckers ever again I might just shower those assholes with bullets. Yeah, that’s how emotionally scarred I am from what I endured as a kid and teenager.

When you hear something often enough you start to believe it. It’s how religious cults manage to brainwash children after all, and once that brainwashing starts to take effect it’s really fucking hard to break that line of thinking. Thanks to the assholes in school I spent the vast majority of my adult life thinking I was a worthless fucking piece of shit who served no purpose and was a mistake and a freak of nature. Their words ultimately drove me to substance abuse, self-injury and multiple suicide attempts. It was their words that contributed a significant part to the breakdown of my last romantic relationship. It wasn’t until about this time last year that I started realizing that their words were the biggest lies I’d ever been told in my life and I was able to finally start putting the pieces of my broken life back together and getting my shit in order. That semicolon on my right wrist isn’t just a punctuation mark. It makes the invisible scars I have visible to everyone else. It tells my painful story. It speaks to what I’ve been through.

I still have the pain from these invisible scars and will carry it with me for the rest of my life. It will never go away, but it gets better in time. However, no matter what happened to me or anyone else, don’t you think for one god-fucking-damn second that words can never or will never hurt someone. If you think that you’re probably a fucking psychopath incapable of any sort of real human emotion anyway and should probably refrain from taking verbal shits whenever possible.

Alright, forgive me dear readers but I just had to get this out of my system. If you read this whole thing (and excused the approximately 30 instances of profanity throughout this post) thank you. Reblog the shit out of it. Let people know this isn’t okay and what bullying can do. And if you are/were a school bully and are to this day unrepentant of your actions, all I have to say to you is fuck you up the ass with a 29-and-a-half foot pole.

If any K-12 and/or university teachers follow or read my blog, please chime in on this. What is your experience with tattoos or piercings at your job?

I ask as I’m seriously considering making a career change and going back into teaching (I taught for awhile before but I’m thinking about going back into it). Do you have tattoos, facial piercings or both? If so, has it been a barrier to employment? Do they make you cover your tattoos or remove your piercing jewelry? If you are not tattooed or pierced yourself, do you have colleagues with tattoos/piercings and are they treated any differently?

I used to teach high school and university math when I was a blank canvas but if I were to go back into teaching I wouldn’t do math. I’d go back to school and get a music-ed degree and I’d want to teach elementary music or be a middle school/high school choir director.

I imagine it largely has to do with geographic area and large urban vs. small rural district but I’m just curious to hear of various experiences. Please let me know.